Novenas & Novellas

November 2025 very much did not go as I’d expected, and my writing output shows it, clocking in with a word count under two thousand.

I’m keeping the details and reasons between us, but my husband and I separated early in the month. I’m the one who moved out, and since there was nothing keeping me in Georgia, I came back home to Eastern North Carolina. I spent exactly half the month — fifteen days — living in a hotel before moving into a beautiful 1910s-era house in a small town. It has way more square footage than I need, but it’s well-built and extremely walkable.

The long-distance move and keeping up with the paid job took up nearly all of my time and energy in November. I’m just now beginning to reflect, regroup, and figure out what I want to do next.

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Last year, around this same time, I noted a dip in my writing productivity and I attributed it to a tooth infection and traveling. This year, I didn’t have such handy excuses, but the dip in productivity happened anyway.

While I am going to note that I experienced a major depressive phase this month (one that I’m still not sure I’m completely out of), I find it interesting to see that it once again happened right around the time the seasons changed. It’s equally interesting to note some of the things I did by way of trying to get out of it:

• I began to keep a personal/spiritual handwritten journal again;
• I made several posts on this site’s blog; and
• I even started a new blog that focuses on an aspect of my non-writing life.

Clearly, then, the problem was not a lack of writing productivity itself, although my word count was the lowest it’s been this year. Instead, it’s a situation of my creativity, particularly as it regards fiction, taking a nose-dive.

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I had a good solid month for writing in September, with a final word count of 27,533. Even better, the majority of it was not in the fan fiction rewrites project, although I added some words to that.

That’s not to say I don’t think I should be working on fan fiction! It just means that I ended up diversifying a bit. I tend to write better fan fiction when it’s not all that I write, just as I tend to write better in general when it’s not all that I do.

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August yielded my highest word count yet, but the majority of it was my Fan Fiction Rewrites project, so I’m not ready to call that an unqualified triumph. The month itself was a bit topsy-turvy for me, anyway. As I write this, I’m very annoyingly not at Dragon Con, as I was too sick to go. I began last week with food poisoning and ended it with something that’s either a cold, fall allergies, or both.

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I had an excellent writing month in July. Final word count for the month was 25,353 and I got work done on both of my current large projects (The Perfect Daughter and All That Mattered). In addition, I finished all but the last little bit of the Fan Fiction Rewrites project; at this point, I’m close enough to done to call it “finished,” as the outstanding items require a good bit of reworking before I can post them.

Here’s the full list of everything I got posted in July:

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June was a fairly busy month for me, albeit not entirely due to plans. I did make it to The Hollywood Show in Burbank and I had a fantastic time. My flight route was Atlanta-Denver-Burbank, and I wrote a little bit on the Atlanta-Denver leg, but by the time I got on the plane in Denver I was already getting tired and I ended up not writing on that leg, nor on my return route which was an exact reverse. I also ended up not writing at the show.

About a week or so after I got back — just long enough to be sure that I hadn’t brought it back from California — I came down with a cold. As colds go, it was mild, but due to pre-existing issues with my lungs, I don’t tolerate respiratory infections very well. I was down for a good week and am still feeling lingering effects.

I also finally got back on my correct medication regimen shortly after returning from Burbank, and that sometimes affects my creativity for a few weeks while it settles out. As of this writing, I find I’m still in it.

That said, I wasn’t completely unproductive this month. Final word count was 14,924, and it included (but wasn’t necessarily limited to):

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While I’m still stuck in idle on The Perfect Daughter — I only managed 414 words of rewriting — I was still fairly busy during May. Final word count for the month was 22,540 against a goal of 20,000, which means that as of this writing I’m currently at 92.84% of my annual goal. In other words, I’m still behind, but I’m managing a pace that will eventually catch me up. In fact, that could come as soon as this month.

So what was I working on instead?

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April 2025 was a bit of a rough month for me, writing-wise, and my final word count then was under 2K. I’m pleased to see that, this April, I can at least report a word count of five figures: 13,750 exactly. Unfortunately, that figure only represents a little over seventy percent of my monthly goal, meaning that I’ve fallen behind on catching up the annual goal. As of this writing I’m at 86.45%.

I spent a healthy amount of my writing time going through with self-publishing “Whitewood,” which took a more effort than I thought it would (although I learned a lot, so I’ll be able to shorten the process in the future.) I’ve also created a hard-copy version of Standing in the Dark for anyone who might wish to purchase one, but aside of listing it on this site, I don’t plan to promote it. (I’ve already done some promotion for “Whitewood.”)

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